You guys are going to laugh at me. June marks my 10-year FT anniversary, but you'll all get a kick out of my post when you pay attention to my time lines.

I never traveled by air as a kid. We would camp and visit my grandparents via a 9-hour car ride, and that was it. I decided that college was a time to get away from the house and explore life, and for that reason, at the very last minute, I opted to attend school in DC as opposed to the state university.

I think my first two trips by air I didn't even bother with an FF account, 'cause no way would I ever get enough miles for a free ticket. Somehow, I managed to score enough miles for a domestic F upgrade, and upgraded DCA-MSP-MKE. At the time (circa 1998) NW would run a DC10 on the MSP-MKE run. I thought that would be a sweet upgrade, despite the shortness of the flight. It was.

Later in college, I worked as a baggage handler for a UAX carrier at IAD. Despite flying for free, I never left the country. (Even when the flights are free, you still gotta spend money when you get there, and on my $10/hr ramp salary, I didn't have that kind of cash. I also worked a lot of overtime, so vacation = missed overtime.) I do recall flying in UA's F suite domestically, I think about 8 times. The first time, I flew with my dad from ORD to SFO just for the heck of it. I had been visiting him, and we were debating what to do. He said that he's always wanted to fly on the 747, and never had the chance. I looked at the flight schedules, and realized we could catch a same-day return from ORD-SFO. So the next day, we did. We flew out in J, and sat in the hump. Dad liked it. (I still reflect back on that as pretty good product -- this was 2001 or so.) But on the return, the agent said we could sit in J together or separately in the suites. I didn't even ask dad what he wanted, I just said he'd enjoy the suite. He said to me "J was nice, what's the big deal with F?" I told him to wait and see, and he really did enjoy his experience.

In college, I learned to fly airplanes. Part of the reason I worked for the airline was to get an in as a pilot. But I also learned a lot about the industry, and one of those things is that a pilot's career sucks. Too much instability, furloughs, or what not. So I decided to become an air traffic controller, and moved out to LA to attend a civilian program.

Well, living in LA, the miles thing really kicked in. I moved there in 2004, and for about four years, I was an elite on NW with all of the flying back and forth. My first and last years were silver, and the two in between were platinum. During those years, my focus was earning and maintaining elite status. I cared about the miles, just not spending them.

I first left North American in 2006, traveling to Germany to see an eye doctor. I paid for my ticket, and dad came as my baby sitter. I got him a Y ticket on miles. I was able to get row 10 on the A330 (my favorite) and had plenty of leg room. I remember thinking that as long as I could get row 10, I wouldn't bother with J for an 8 hour flight. (I still feel that way.) While I was out in LA, I was able to take advantage of an NW mistake fare. They were selling air+land packages from LA with $400 off. Well, one week I spent a night there for $80. The next week, I got my parents two FF tickets and they flew out with me. It was fun, 'cause we took the same flight from LAX (they came from MKE) so we got to have lunch and see the lounge. The T2 NW lounge sucked, but my parents don't know the difference.

Well, all good things must come to an end. As I mentioned above, I have eye problems, and was unable to become an ATC'er. I left LA in 2007 to start grad school, desiring to study applied math and mix it with my aviation background. That worked as planned -- I now do operations research for a company who does contract work for the FAA. And they give me plenty of vacation

When I started grad school (2007, hah!), I looked down at my statement balance and saw that I had 380,000 frequent flyer miles. I remember thinking, hey, I could actually go somewhere with these! It took me awhile to figure out what to do, cause I didn't have a lot of money. When I found out you could get a decent hostel room in Bangkok for $20/night, and when I found that I could actually get J tickets to BKK for 120k r/t, I figured what the heck. Unfortunately, I couldn't get availability in J on the way home. But I flew LAX-NRT-BKK in J, flew to SIN on Jetstar, burnt some SPG points at the LM SIN, and then flew SIN-NRT-SEA-LAX in coach. I got row ten again and broke up the trip with a 30 hour layover in Tokyo. It was a lot of fun.

In grad school, I went to China for spring break. Again, lots of miles, not much cash. Flew J the whole way. I had a Saturday class in the spring, and talked to the prof about the exam conflict with my trip. He said, "What you want to go to MCO or something?" But when I explained it, he told me that anybody who was crazy enough to go to China for spring break, he'd accommodate. I will always appreciate him for that -- small gesture on his part, but it meant a lot to me.

Later in 2008 when I was done with school and had gotten done with a contract gig, I burned the rest of my miles and went to KTM for three weeks. I took my time getting there -- overnight in CDG, long layover in LHR, overnight in DEL (at that point I was tired and just went to bed when I got in.) On the return, I had a 10-hour layover in DEL, with another 8 in AMS.

I started dating the woman who is now my wife three weeks before that trip. She was enamored by my stories, and on our first date, I made it clear that one of my goals in life is to see as much of the world as possible -- and she told me she wanted to come too For Memorial Day 2009, we ended up going to London on a paid trip (BA had a really cheap special -- we paid $1100 for two roundtrip tickets and three nights in a hotel). Neither of us were particularly impressed. But the important thing is we didn't kill each, and really had a great time together.

Later that year, we started talking about a trip to SE Asia. She's always wanted to see Ko Phi Phi ever since she saw the movie, "The Beach." I started looking at *W C&P availability, and was able to get rooms at every property we wanted to stay at. What luck! I don't (er, didn't) have a ton of miles any more, so the airfare would be out of pocket. Being the resourceful guy that I am, I was able to buy 200k points from Alaska -- enough for two CX J tickets out of JFK -- for $4600, after all taxes and fees. We leave next month for a five-week trip through the region. I've promised her a good time (We're traveling through BKK, Chiang Mai, Krabi Beach, Ko Phi Phi, Kuala Lumpur, and three different regions of Bali) so I hope I don't disappoint.

Oodles of credit card bonuses later (and some reasonably cheap cash rates that I canceled some C&P stays for) we're sitting on 70k SPG points, 50k UA miles, and soon 220k AA miles. Desire to see something new will compete for the reasonably good value that can be had in Thailand, Malaysia, and Bali. (Granted, there will be plenty of those countries and SE Asia as a whole that we haven't seen that will still be new when we go back.) Desire to buy a house (and save for a down payment) will make travel in the near future a bit difficult.